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Sunday, June 7, 2015

A Timeline For The Use Of The Saying "The Blacker The Berry, The Sweeter The Juice"

Edited by Azzi Powell

This post traces the saying "The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice" from its inclusion in African American Thomas W. Talley's 1922 book Negro Folk Rhymes: Wise & Otherwise to Kendrick Lamar's 2015 Hip Hop record that has that saying as its title.

The content of this post is presented for historical, sociological, and cultural purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to the publishers of these examples on YouTube.

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TIMELINE FOR THE USE OF "THE BLACKER THE BERRY, THE SWEETER THE JUICE" AS A BOOK TITLE AND IN SONGS
These are the examples that I'm aware of. I'd appreciate information about any other examples.

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1929 - [novel] The Blacker The Berry by Wallace Thurman
From http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/868440.The_Blacker_the_Berry_
The Blacker the Berry...
"One of the most widely read and controversial works of the Harlem Renaissance, The Blacker the Berry...was the first novel to openly explore prejudice within the Black community. This pioneering novel found a way beyond the bondage of Blackness in American life to a new meaning in truth and beauty.

Emma Lou Brown's dark complexion is a source of sorrow and humiliation -- not only to herself, but to her lighter-skinned family and friends and to the white community of Boise, Idaho, her home-town. As a young woman, Emma travels to New York's Harlem, hoping to find a safe haven in the Black Mecca of the 1920s. Wallace Thurman re-creates this legendary time and place in rich detail, describing Emma's visits to nightclubs and dance halls and house-rent parties, her sex life and her catastrophic love affairs, her dreams and her disillusions -- and the momentous decision she makes in order to survive.

A lost classic of Black American literature, The Blacker the Berry...is a compelling portrait of the destructive depth of racial bias in this country."

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From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blacker_the_Berry
..."Variations in skin tone has historically related to European and Native American ancestry among African Americans, and the tangled history of slave societies, and benefits that some mixed-race children received from white fathers.* The topic of behavior related to differing skin tones has since been treated by other artists and writers, and the issue of skin bias has been studied as a sociological and psychological issue among academics.[2]

Despite the calls for Black Power and "Black is beautiful" in the mid-twentieth century, studies have found that skin tone bias continues. It is more openly discussed, studied and, at times, mocked.[2] The director Spike Lee has explored this topic, particularly in his film School Daze (1988), about students at a prestigious college (modeled on Spelman College and Morehouse College).

In 2001 Maxine S. Thompson and Verna M. Keith presented the results of a study on gender, skin tone and self efficacy. They found darker skin more problematic for women, for whom skin tone had more effect on self-esteem, especially for lower and working class women. Higher class women could escape the effects of skin color by other accomplishments. Skin tone presented less of a self-esteem issue for men, but did affect their sense of self-efficacy.[2]

...In the 1993 song Keep Ya Head Up by rapper Tupac Shakur, the novel's line "the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice" is referenced. The novel is also referenced in Kendrick Lamar's 2015 song "The Blacker the Berry"."**
-snip-
*It’s significant that the editors wrote “from their white fathers” and made no reference to the possibility of people who are mixed race having non-Black mothers.

**It's more accurate to say that these Hip Hop examples and other usages of the line "the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice" quote the saying and not necessarily the book with that title. However, the book is an early documented example of the use of Black folk's use of that saying to mean that dark skinned Black females are just as good if not better than other females.

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1969 - The Isley Brothers- The Blacker The Berrie (a/k/a Black Berries)
From http://www.allmusic.com/album/the-brothers-isley-mw0000024667 "The Blacker The Berries (aka Black Berries) The Isley Brothers" AllMusic Review by Andrew Hamilton
"The late '60s and early '70s remain a favorite period in the Isley Brothers evolution. Ronald sung hard, and brothers O'Kelly and Rudolph supplied church-inspired backing whoops to his lead. The tunes had catchy titles and creative, rhyming lyrics. This recording is loaded with that rocking, "It's Your Thing" style. "The Blacker the Berry the Sweeter Juice" isn't about fruit but speaks of the desirability of dark-complexioned women."...

Here's a response to a Yahoo.com question page about the second line of that rap:
From https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080508210732AAowkG2
"The darker the flesh then the deeper the roots? What do you think this means?" [The question and all responses are from 2008.]
♫Č.Ĵ.♫
"he was talkin about black people..."the darker you are the closer you are to your ancestors"...the darker the flesh(skin) then the deeper the roots(where it began, ancestors),"
-snip-
The responder alludes to Tupac's "Keep Ya Head Up" rap. The only other commenter who answered this, a blogger using the tag name "The Evil Genius", wrote "the darker your flesh is the closer you are to your ancestors."
-snip-
It's important to recognize that Tupac's "the darker the flesh, the deeper the roots" can be considered an expression of colorism, i.e. thinking that darker skinned people have more roots (or recognize and honor their roots-for instance their "blackness"- more than light skinned black people. That's significant because in the late 1960s and 1970s some afrocentric Black people accused light skinned Black people of not being "as black" as brown skinned or darker brown skinned Black people. And in 2008 some Black Americans labeled then candidate for US President Barack Obama as being "not Black enough" because he was mixed race and had no slave ancestors.

Usually colorism is thought of as people favoring light skinned people over dark skinned people, but being prejudiced against a person of color because of their light complexion is also a type of colorism.

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2002- The song "Run Tell That!" from the 2002 Broadway show Hairspray
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hairspray_(musical)
"Hairspray is an American musical with music by Marc Shaiman, lyrics by Scott Wittman and Shaiman and a book by Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan, based on the 1988 John Waters film Hairspray. The songs include 1960s-style dance music and "downtown" rhythm and blues. In 1962 Baltimore, Maryland, plump teenager Tracy Turnblad's dream is to dance on The Corny Collins Show, a local TV dance program based on the real-life Buddy Deane Show.[1] When Tracy wins a role on the show, she becomes a celebrity overnight, and meets a colorful array of characters. She then launches a campaign to integrate the show. Hairspray is a social commentary on the injustices of parts of American society in the 1960s...

The musical's original Broadway production opened on August 15, 2002."
-snip-
Excerpt of the song "Run Tell That!"
[singer: Black male character "Seeweed"
I can't see
Why people look at me
And only see the color of my face

And then there's those
That try to help, god knows
But have to always put me in my place

Now i won't ask you to be color blind
'Cause if you pick the fruit
Then girl, you're sure to find...

The blacker the berry
The sweeter the juice
I could say it ain't so
But darlin', what's the use?

The darker the chocolate
The richer the taste
And that's where it's at...
...now run and tell that!!

ENSEMBLE
Run and tell that!

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Click https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2xkGS5i9ko for a video clip of "Hairspray - Run And Tell That (with subtitles)"
-snip-
I believe that the lines quoted above from the song "Run Tell That!" from the 2002 Broadway show Hairspray mark the beginning of the sexualization of the saying "the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice". Prior to that among Black people the saying served as an affirmation about the desirability of dark skinned females.

Another meaning that I've read online* that has been given to "the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice is that it refers to things or people getting better with age. I don't think that was what most Black Americans meant when we use that saying (prior to that song). That meaning is also alluded to in Kendrick Lamar's 2015 Hip Hop record that is highlighted below.

JaneB
"It means that Things improve with age"
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soontobewed
"isn't it obvious? Look at a berry, when it is darker in color it tastes better becuase it has ripened. The more "ripened" the berry the better it tastes.."

**
♥Slim Diva♥™
"It refers to black women too. Whoo hoo!!!!!"

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February 2015 Kendrick Lamar [Hip Hop] - The Blacker The Berry
WARNING: This song contains profanity, sexually explicit language, and the use of a form of the n word.

The Compton rapper dropped a fiery new single on Monday titled "The Blacker the Berry" (inspired by the old saying "the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice," which was also famously used in Tupac Shakur's "Keep Your Head Up"), and not only does it have a crushing beat that inevitably causes you to head-nod for five minutes straight, but each lyric is laced with a powerful and emotional response to the ongoing race and violence issues in America.

Combine that with Kendrick's aggressive and passionate delivery, and you have a musical gem that evokes the frustrations and thoughts of protesters in the streets after the tragic killings of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Eric Garner and other victims.”

...[Pre-Hook]
The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice
The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice
The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice
The blacker the berry, the bigger I shoot

[Hook: Assassin]
I said they treat me like a slave, cah' me black
Woi, we feel a whole heap of pain, cah' we black
And man a say they put me inna chains, cah' we black
Imagine now, big gold chains full of rocks
How you no see the whip, left scars pon' me back
But now we have a big whip parked pon' the block
All them say we doomed from the start, cah' we black
Remember this, every race start from the black*, jus 'member dat
-snip-
*Correction from a commenter [The onsite transcriber of those lyrics had written “block” instead of "black", but I agree that the word "black" is a much better fit for the meaning of that verse.]

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I'm an African American mother, grandmother, & retired human services administrator. For more than forty years I have shared adapted West African stories with audiences in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area.
I have four blogspots: pancocojams, zumalayah, cocojams2, and .Civil Rights Songs. Much of the content of these blogs were previously found on my cocojams and jambalayah cultural websites. I curate all of these blogs on a voluntary basis.
Each of these blogs have the primary goal of raising awareness about cultural aspects of African American culture and of other Black cultures throughout the world, particularly in regards to music & dance traditions.
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